2 
CAPE COD. 
Cod, as well as my neighbor on “ Human Culture.” It 
is but another name for the same thing, and hardly a 
sandier phase of it. As for my title, I suppose that the 
word Cape is from the French cap ; which is from the 
Latin caput, a head; which is, perhaps, from the verb 
capere, to take, — that being the part by which we take 
hold of a thing: — Take Time by the forelock. It is also 
the safest part to take a serpent by. And as for Cod, 
that was derived directly from that great store of cod¬ 
fish ” which Captain Bartholomew Gosnold caught there 
in 1602; which fish appears to have been so called from 
the Saxon word codde, “a case in which seeds are 
lodged,” either from the form of the fish, or the quantity 
of spawn it contains; whence also, perhaps, codling 
(pomum coctile ” ? ) and coddle, — to cook green like 
peas. (V. Die.) 
Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachu¬ 
setts : the shoulder is at Buzzard’s Bay; the elbow, or 
crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro; 
and the sandy fist at Provincetown, — behind which the 
State stands on her guard, with her back to the Green 
Mountains, and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean, 
like an athlete protecting her Bay, — boxing with north¬ 
east storms, and, ever and anon, heaving up her Atlantic 
adversary from the lap of earth,—ready to thrust forward 
her other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her 
breast at Cape Ann. 
On studying the map, I saw that there must be an un¬ 
interrupted beach on the east or outside of the fore-arm 
of the Cape, more than thirty miles from the general line 
of the coast, which would afford a good sea view, but 
that, on account of an opening in the beach, forming the 
entrance to Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, I must strike it 
